George Clooney recently addressed the rumors that constantly seem to spread about the actor's sexual preference: "My private life is private, and I'm very happy in it," he told The Advocate. "Who does it hurt if someone thinks I'm gay? I'll be long dead and there will still be people who say I was gay. I don't give a s--t."

"I think it's funny," Clooney continued, "but the last thing you'll ever see me do is jump up and down, saying, 'These are lies!' That would be unfair and unkind to my good friends in the gay community. I'm not going to let anyone make it seem like being gay is a bad thing."

Clooney took those words a step further and joined fellow same-sex marriage advocates in Hollywood onstage Saturday night, performing a one night only reading of the play 8 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. The play, written by Dustin Lance Black, explores the legal battle to overturn Proposition 8, California's gay marriage ban.

Clooney, playing the role of lawyer David Boies, joined buddy Brad Pitt on stage. The Moneyball actor, 48, played the role of Judge Vaughn Walker. Joining them for the reading, which benefitted the organization attempting to overturn Prop. 8, were dozens of Hollywood's same-sex marriage advocates, including Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Bacon, Modern Family's Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Glee's Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, and Chris Colfer, and George Takei.